A Vicious Circle

The words go round and round…

Bush expresses regret for Iraq rhetoric, but the right regrets the regret

For quite a while, when the president was asked whether he’d made any mistakes in office, Bush would struggle to come up with something. More recently, he came up with a stock answer: Bush thought it was a mistake to use warmongering rhetoric such as “bring ‘em on.” This week, in the midst of a European [...]

Projected GOP Losses

The GOP is facing an increasingly ugly situation in Washington. I guess we’ll all have to wait and see if those Electronic Voting Machines can rescue things.

Republicans Gird for Big Losses in Congress

Sarah Lueck reports on the election cycle. Republicans are bracing for double-digit losses in the House and the prospect of four or five losses in the Senate, as they fight to hold a wide range of districts and states normally seen as safe for them, from Alaska and Colorado to Mississippi and North Carolina. The feared setback [...]

The Right To Vote

Lost.

97-year-old woman in Arizona falls victim to state’s stringent voter ID law.

A 97-year-old Arizona woman who has voted in every election since 1933 says she won’t be able to vote in November, due to the state’s stringent voter ID law that requires proof of citizenship for those registering to vote and a photo ID when voting. Shirley Preiss was born in 1910 in Kentucky, before the [...]

Quote of the Day

“It’s not too important” Go figure.

100 Years

Matt Lauer asked John McCain this morning if he now had a better idea of when U.S. troops could come home from Iraq. “No,” McCain said, “but that’s not too important.” 100 years redux? Actually, yes, because McCain said [...]

UPDATE: Ex Post McCaino

The McCain campaign is hitting back hard against Democratic criticism of his “not that important” quote this morning on Today. But as often is the case with McCain, the explanations of what he said are even sillier than the original [...]

Campaign Shakeup

The Obama camp loses a big fish.

Head of Obama’s Vice Presidential Search Resigns

James Johnson had come under scrutiny after disclosures that he had received mortgage loans on [...]

So Much For “Secret”

It’s not just the American government that can put on its “stupid” hat every once in a while…

Al-Qaeda documents left on train

A police inquiry has been launched after top-secret documents containing the latest government intelligence on al-Qaeda were left on a train. The documents belonged to a very senior intelligence official working in the Cabinet Office. A passenger on the train from [...]

What A Day

We had a two hour power outage this morning. Turns out our local power company had to take down a transmission line so a neighboring company could do some work! It was supposed to take 45 minutes. After two hours, it finally came back. But, my DSL service did not. Finally got that fixed and things are returning to normal. It’s strange how isolated you feel when there are no lights, no TV, no sounds of fans running, throughout the house.

When things came back online, the first news I saw on TV was from the land of my birth, Iowa, where floods are a huge problem. My first TV job was in Cedar Rapids, where nearby small towns are being evacuated. Everybody being told to get out. Downstream, in Iowa City, where I attended college, they’re anticipating big problems as water rushes over the top of the nearby Coralville Reservoir. Our home was near that reservoir.

As if that’s not enough, there are new reports on Global Warming. That’s right, doubters, the science is beginning to stack up.

Study: Arctic warming rate could triple

Rapid Arctic sea ice loss could triple the rate of warming over northern Alaska, Canada and Russia and trigger permafrost thawing that unleashes extremely potent greenhouse gases, according to a new study. “Our study suggests that, [...]

Summer Reading

Here’s something to make your hot Wednesday pass a bit quicker. It’s a fascinating “inside story” on what went on in the Pentagon after the 9/11 attack. One thing of note: this makes it quite obvious that it WAS a plane that hit the Pentagon, not a missile (as some conspiracy theories would have you believe).

Secret History: What Happened Inside The Pentagon After Being Struck On 9/11

His own building was burning. Lower Manhattan, too. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld knew little else about what was happening to America as he huddled with his brain trust near the National Military Command Center, deep inside the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. When word had first started to circulate about a plane hitting the [...]